Austroads releases revised Data Standard for road asset managers

Road transport association, Austroads, has published the third version of the Data Standard for Road Management and Investment with revised priority harmonisation subsets and metrics, following stakeholder feedback.

The Austroads Road Data Standard Project was reportedly initiated in response to requests from stakeholders who increasingly need to share data with other road agencies but are frustrated by the lack of common data definitions and formats.

The Data Standard will harmonise the data collected and used by road asset managers from planning to asset disposal and reporting.

The prevalence of technology present within mobile devices, on-board vehicles and roadside infrastructure has resulted in the exponential increase of available data, according to Austroads. The data generated from these devices provide new opportunities for gaining insight into areas of our road network. The Data Standard provides the opportunity to underpin the collection and sharing of data into a nationally consistent architecture.

Austroads said a nationally harmonised data sharing framework will enable road managers to: reduce data collection costs; better measure, manage and optimise the performance of the road network and infrastructure; improve road maintenance and investment activities; prioritise activities based on a comparable baseline; and investigate and implement alternative road funding frameworks including the heavy vehicle reform based on road use and vehicle tracking.

The Priority Harmonisation Subset (PHS) are those data items identified as a priority for implementation by road agencies for industry benefit and effective asset management practice. The PHS, is confined to roads (pavement and surfacing), structures (bridges, major culverts), and tunnels.

The revised versions of the Priority Harmonisation Subset (PHS) and Austroads Data Standard were developed with input from Australian and New Zealand stakeholders.

The updated version of the Standard highlights the priority data sets in the data tables and gives guidance about what areas of practice, harmonisation of these data items supports.

Revised Priority Harmonisation Subsets (PHS) and Metrics for Data Standard for Road Maintenance and Investment summarises the revised PHS and metrics that underpin the third edition of Austroads’ Data Standard.

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